Tag: architecture

Domino Sugar Development’s First Commercial Space Hits the Market

This is a remarkably nice building. And in terms of urban design, there is just no comparison to everything that the 2005 rezoning wrought on the waterfront – taller, and thinner, is definitely better. Walking around this building is just a completely different experience than the super-block developments everywhere else.

Dime Savings Bank to be Landmarked

03/07/2018 | Comment

At a public hearing yesterday, the Landmarks Preservation Commission took another step toward landmark designation for the Dime Savings Bank of Williamsburgh. Among those speaking in favor of designation were the building’s owner and the Historic Districts Council.

The bank building on Havemeyer Street was constructed in 1908 and design by the architecture firm Helmle & Huberty. The building is the second home to Dime (originally they were on Broadway and Wythe). After the construction of the Williamsburg Bridge in 1903, many of Williamsburg’s banks moved from lower Broadway and Grand Street to the newly-created Williamsburg Bridge Plaza. The plaza itself never became the grand public space that one would expect for this era of the City Beautiful and Beaux Arts era, but did become home to a number of monumental buildings, including the Williamsburgh Trust Company, the Dime Savings Bank, Northside Savings Bank and the First National Bank.

It is nice to see Williamsburg get a bit more attention from LPC, but as one of the oldest and most richly layered neighborhoods in New York, we definitely get short shrift. Meanwhile, Manhattan continues to be carpeted with historic district designations.

Dime Savings Bank of Willliamsburgh, Williamsburg

Dime Savings Bank of Williamsburgh (1908, Helmle & Huberty architects)
[Photo: Matthew X. Kiernan, via Flickr]


Karl Fischer Has Scored a Major Coup in Williamsburg

Matt Chaban discovers 101 Bedford, a rather nice design by Karl Fischer, particularly at street level. A lot of this has to do with materials and scale – neither of which is particularly crazy in this instance. Unlike the last development boom, which gave us Karl Fischer Row on Bayard Street and much worse, this boom is less about glass and funky forms and more about solid, in many cases tasteful designs. 80 Metropolitan may have started the trend, but it has been picked up at 101 Bedford, 50 North 5th and others.

Condo Tenants Ticketed After Developer Left No Room for Trash

Condo owners at 59, 61 and 63 Conselyea St. said they have been fined for placing trash enclosures on the sidewalk without a permit since they have no other spot to place their garbage… “[We] have no common area to put trash … The city has no code requiring developers to actually build a garbage room.”

The amount of garbage (literal and figural) that litters the sidewalks in front of new developments is ridiculous. In an effort to squeeze out every square inch of sellable floor area, developers are putting trash cages and mailboxes in the public way, or worse, just not providing any accommodation for trash, and the city seems just fine with it.

[The headline of the DNA article blames the architect, but this is driven by developer greed, facilitated by the architects.]

Wythe Hotel

05/22/2012 | Comment

englehardt_hotel.JPG

80 Wythe
Theobald Englehardt (1900)
Morris Adjmi Architects (2012)
Photo: brooklyn11211


Matt Chaban in the Observer:

This was, is and will be the greatest thing Williamsburg has ever seen. It is the pinnacle, the acme, the end. The story of gentrification, at least in this oft-buzzed about corner of Brooklyn, is over — checked at the curved-glass-and-carefully-rusted-steel door outside the Wythe. If Francis Fukuyama needed a hotel room in Brooklyn, this would be it. Thank you, and good night.

Matt & I disagree somewhat here. Not on the fact that the Wythe Hotel is great – it is. And not on the fact that the building itself “is the nicest thing ever built in Williamsburg” – if it isn’t that, it’s damn close. Morris Adjmi’s design of the new, the old and the integration of the two is almost perfect (Theobald would have been proud).

But the pinnacle? The acme? The end? Let’s hope not – we need more nice things like this.